Capital Vices
by devilberry
Summary: A drabble collection based upon humanity's tendency to sin.
1. Pride

_This idea has been stuck in my head forever. Seven drabbles. One for each of the Seven Deadly Sins._

_I'm sure there will be tons of pairings. (I can pretty much promise thiefshipping. This chapter mentions peachshipping and revolutionshipping.)_

_Everyone _will_ be OOC. By OOC, I mean dark. Very dark. Expect dark themes._

_The rating is _very_ subject to change._

_Also, feel free to feed me ideas involving the other characters and what sin they should be assigned._

* * *

Vanity is a sin, and Anzu knows this.

Knowing isn't everything, though. Knowing isn't believing.

(And if you'll take the time to notice it, the word "lie" is tucked away, comfortably, in the middle of the word "believe," right where it thinks no one will care to notice it.)

And she rakes her fingers through her dark hair—a soft, sweet, lovely brown. The color of a small dear deer. That chestnut color of their large swirling doe-brown eyes. They way those sweet orbs look stuck in the headlights, right before a truck smashes into them.

She stares into a mirror; taking time to draw a brush through those lush locks of her's, and does her best not to study herself. Cut herself open and pick herself apart as she has so many mornings before.

But cut herself open she does, and always will do. Shoves needles into her icy eyes—not doe-brown, not soft, not lovely; but a cold hard blue (the color of corpses)—and rips them to shreds with her thoughts.

Anzu is an ugly little thing, but when she starts comparing her eyes to sapphires instead of rotting human flesh, she forgets this.

It all goes back to that "lie" that likes to hide inside of that word we all know and love.

And on her way to school, she looks. Every mirror, every piece of glass, every window—she seeks out her reflection. Has to make sure her hair looks perfect. Has to make sure her toothy smile is bone-white and her lips smooth and that they hold in all of her secrets.

She's mere steps from the school entrance, and she skims her hands over herself. Smoothes her blouse, perfects her hair, and hikes up her skirt _just_ so—exposing more of the milky white expanse of her legs. White like an angel; the color of blank innocence.

If anyone knows anything about European monarchs they will know that in places like England and France, pallor is a sign of beauty. If one could see the blue of their veins webbing together underneath the soft, pale, skin of their wrist—they were considered lovely.

So, Anzu picks at the sweetsweet baby pink of her blouse sleeve. Inspects herself _(cuts herself open)_ and double checks to ensure the blue rivers are still visible underneath a tangle of bright red slashes and purple watercolor marks.

Vanity is a sin, and Anzu knows this.

She smiles wide as a small boy with tricolored hair comes bouncing towards her. Between the look on her face, and the way she's holding her arms so close, he asks what's wrong.

_Nothing_, she says in a voice so assured that she even convinces herself of the lie. She leans in, and smears pink lipstick across his small forehead. The blood in his face starts pumping—cheeks soon matching the _Tickle Me Pink_ that Anzu pressed against him.

(Anzu never wears red lipstick, because red attracts too much attention. Because she already has _so_ much red slashed across her prettyvainlittle body.)

And as she seals it with a kiss, she tries not to think of the boy's other half and how she's not sure which one she loves more or less.

Being a vain little girl, she thinks she can have them both. Hold both of them close to her heart; love them both, kiss them both. If they can share one body, they can share one Anzu.

(And she'll drop her regal, pale, Snow White lids over her deadeadead corpse blue pools, and try not to realize that one doesn't know about the other.)

And, tonight,

Anzu will come home,

and she'll realize

how _beautifully_ such sharp objects

can reflect her perfect image.

(Vanity is a sin, and Anzu knows this.)


	2. Wrath

_beta'd by the always lovely, Satiah~_

_This chapter belongs to Malik.  
_

* * *

He's always been such an angry little boy.

With fire behind his lavender eyes, he comes out _screaming_. Kicking and scratching with tiny baby fists he enters the world. A murderous toothless smile and a short shock of sandy locks. He's born hating so much that Mother Dearest just can't take it.

When you come out killing, you can't stop.

So Malik is locked away in a quiet torture chamber. The skitterscatter of rats and the crackling of beetles and the humdrum of insanity are his only friends. He used to cry when he was small. Held up in his tomb of a room, he'd press his hands flat against his tan face and let the big fat hot drops slam against the floor like tiny bombs. Boom. Boom. Boom. The rage and spite are just too much sometimes; it's a lot to lock away in such a little body. So he lets it bubble over into slick slimy salty tears. Baby boy _allows_ it to manifest itself into a physical form. (And this is where he starts to let things go wrong.)

Among the cries and wails, Big Brother sometimes lets himself in. Smooths Malik's pretty blonde hair (so much like his father's...) and gives him sweet solid words that almost look like reassurance. (But oh, oh, don't misunderstand. Rishid _hates_ the boy just as much as everyone else. The thing stole his role as the Golden Son and the place he held in Daddy's heart. And, oh my, how Malik hates playing his part, and how willing his adoptive brother was to hold the lead.)

But all is fair in love and war, so the tiny tomb keeper hates you twice as much as you hate him. Even when Sister [offers him love and freedom, he can't help but hate her for it. Give him a taste of what he can never fully have, Isis—offer him the forbidden fruit.

(He'll even hate you just so he doesn't make the mistake of loving too much.)

When he gets too big for crying and his father gets too nasty for everything, his wrath must be contained in a new way. A bigger larger older body, yes, but he's got all of yesterday's rage and then some. Too old for tears, but never above his rage. So when he sits, cold and alone with nothing but the flicker flicker flick of dying flames, or when he crawls through the labyrinthine tomb with tunnels crisscrossing like veins, he always finds himself next to the same smooth sandy stone of the walls. _Thud. Thud. Thud. _Bruises blossom like the lavenders that color his eyes. In a few days they fade to black and then to nothing and he's back in those dark dank cold quiet rooms of his.

Long flowing robes and angry words keep anyone from looking too closely.

But then, after time, it isn't as though anyone would find a spot of oddness in marred blotches on the tan smooth skin. What's a few bruises on the arms among a hot knife in the back? And when Daddy cuts, he cuts hard and deep. A blade hotter than those flickering lamps burns brightly as it hisses and kisses and _engraves_ itself into Malik's skin forever. And he screams, oh how he screams! Louder than he's ever done before, even more so than when he cried and cried and cried as a sweet baby boy. He doesn't want this, not in the slightest. His eyes are so wide and so shiny they'd reflect the sun if they'd ever seen it and he screams until his lungs give out. Never wanted this, he did. Brother was willing to take his place, be it out of love or spite, but Father said no. Never. The bloodline had to stay pure as gold.

He can't hold it in any longer. The wounds and the tears and the screams. His wrath smiles and the grin splits itself in two.

(Malik's never seen his darker half, but at night-in that coldquiet room-he can hear the monster laugh.)

He's always been small, but he's never been weak. The shadow is still there, always there, but it haunts only him. He will not let it free; though it poisons him as well as it can it will not infect those of others. The hearts of those he hates.

It's a crisp sunny day when he first sees it. The day, that is. Bright and sparkling and new as the Sun God sits on his mighty throne and watches Malik and his sister race through the crowded markets. People are interesting people, the boy muses, filing up and down the streets and skirting around the vendors. He's almost happy for once.

Running back faster than they can breathe they slip into the dark hole. Always reluctant to go, he crawls into his torture chamber with a frown in his smile and anger in his chest.

Father is curled over Brother, his face is crimson with spite, and Malik washes away with fear_. __Crack, crack, crack_, goes the whip. Bangs against Rishid's tan flesh like bolts of lightning.

And Malik's sick little head goes _crack, crack, crack__._

With a flurry and a flash there's a knife in the little boy's hands. He grips the life out of it, his tiny veins bulging. He slashes and scrapes and smiles. Eyes poisonous, he stabs. Deeper and deeper he thrusts the knife. Laughing while he does it, the poor little thing. He's got his family around him and blood's everywhere and his lips can't shut and the shadow just laughs. Bathes in the blood and carves out the skin. He and Daddy got matching scars, and he peels off his father's back and hands it to Rishid. _You've always wanted to be part of the family…_

He can hear his darker half laughing all the time now. It's never gone away.


	3. Avarice

_Who would be greed other than Seto Kaiba, anyway?_

* * *

  
He tells himself that he's just making up for the money he never had. Being orphaned as a child, being left with nothing, has smartened him up. Fat bills slide against one enough in an intricate dance as Seto puts more money into his wallet, and he knows that he's just being clever. Just earning his fair share.

But maybe that's not true. Maybe he just doesn't know any better. Maybe watching Mom and Dad smile for as shortly as they did, covered in pearls and signing checks, taught him to hold his money and hold it close. He watched them burn through a family fortune, and he watched them die, and he watched them leave him with nothing.

And with Kaiba and with greed, it can't just be about money. It has to be about everything. It's tied up in being young and lonely and hoarding his brother's attention. Showing off and keeping the young boy close and maybe protecting him, but letting him on his own enough so he knows how cruel the rest of the world is. He remembers owning all of the control as a kid in that orphanage, and he remembers the fat fists of bullies slamming down on him, and how funny it was for them to think they could overpower him.

It's all about childhood, he realizes, flicking through the cards of his deck and studying what he's already studied so many times before. He thinks of the years of hoarding, of hiding, of Mokuba cutting up text books to slip trading cards in what used to be the home of mathematic equations or classic literature.

The cards that he earned or that he stole always sitting eagerly on the top of the pile. He lied and cheated to get his baby Blue Eyes, but it was a worth it. A man killed himself over Kaiba's fucking _trading cards_, but he still smirks down at his three of a kind and can't bother himself to care. His heartstrings work themselves into a sad little melody, though, because there really ought to be a fourth one in the set but _if I can't have it no one can_ and something priceless became shredded paper and that was that.

He thinks of the amusement park he wants to build—only for kids just like him to sink their fat dirty hands into—and he'll roll around in the money of everyone who can afford to walk inside and admire his brilliance.

The technology he's made, which he may have shared with the world but the thoughts are still _his_ and he owns them more and more with every beat of his heart. The big luxurious holograms just so he could indulge himself and study the fine lines of his favorite monsters. He'd spend countless hours memorizing every scale on his precious dragon...

And there's also the Duel Disk, but he only bothered himself to create that to distance himself. Something sleek and smart that would allow you to duel your opponent without being too close. Without showing them your face—or your mind, if you know people like Kaiba does with long silver hair and a golden eye and a knack for poking around in the brains of people who lock their thoughts up tight with avarice.

He also has his obsession with power, and the people he crushed to get it.

(Kaiba was smart enough to fool anyone into adopting him. He _picked_ the billionaire.)

He worked hard to get this company in his greedy little hands. He remembers it being such a shame Gozaburo had to die, though. But he also remembers going to the funeral and trying very hard not to laugh.

He sits on a throne of the company that's now _his_, and he stares. He watches the army at his feet clickclack on their keyboards and he admires some of the world's most brilliant minds fumbling about at his feet, trying to engineer technology for a _card game_ when they could be curing cancer or destroying the world. But only if Kaiba wanted them to. And he doesn't, so they hold their computers close, and they just don 't.

He feels like a King sometimes, when he lets his mind run away with him. The rich man in town who controls the palace and puts all of the peasants to work. They bow down to him, mostly, and he hoards their loyalty with wretched hands.

(Sometimes, he thinks about Yugi. And how Yugi always wins. And, really, _Kaiba _deserves to win and he should have all the best cards because he spent his entire life preparing to be the best at this game and he _earned_ all the things that he has, so he should get to keep them.)

Seto Kaiba smiles down at Obelisk the Tormenter, shining royal blue on the front of the card, and he can't _wait_ for the other Egyptian Gods to be his.


End file.
